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This is a business model that has served Microsoft well over the years. The great freedom and power of the Information Age is also it's greatest threat: who owns your data? Or in this case: who controls access to it? I suspect that ultimately these are effectively the same question.

Mind you, these questions should be asked about any company, product, organization, government, or software license. But Microsoft has a long history of abuse that indicates something like this wouldn't end well for end users.

The other side to this is that as Microsoft continues to squeeze the industry for more control and/or profit, more users are beginning to wake up to the fact that MS isn't the only option out there. They'd have to do something tremendously stupid, but the potential is there for an MS Yahoo deal to backfire and result in damage to "the beast".

Honestly, if MS would learn to play nice with the other children, and operate by some reasonable code of business ethics, deals like this wouldn't bother me at all. Here's to wishful thinking. . .

Quoting:Reading the court's summary of how things happened, it's a story of Microsoft time after time telling the court that it needed to try a new system to try to comply, after studying why the previous one didn't work. And the court would go along. In short, Microsoft, from my reading, tried to look like it was in compliance, while in fact not complying, hoping the clock would run out.

Quoting:Call me a cynic, but I can't see the DoJ getting in the way of this one.

Right, there is Google.
Google Search, Google Mail, Google Groups....

Quoting:Just set up a google.mail account! 10 years with Yahoo. Oh well.

Quoting:I am not surprised by this at all. If this goes through, it will cement Microsoft's future and make them the entrenched No.2, we all know who will be No.1.

Remember the MS motto: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish !
Microsoft will skim Yahoo! for all it can get and then either skeletonize it or downright bury it, before taking on Google more confrontationally, head-on.

My feeling is that this will help neither MS nor Yahoo, and is end of the road for Yahoo. What they are missing, and Google gets, is the issue of trust. When choosing an information broker (which is what a search engine basically is, like a newspaper or media outlet) you want to believe that they are 'on the level' with you, and that they'll play fair with you as a customer at least as a matter of policy. Microsoft's ethically challenged corporate culture makes that pretty much unthinkable.

Google understands the issue and they have been trying to differentiate themselves on it -- not always living up to it though. But at least they see the issue for what it is.

> The one thing that is of interest to me is that Yahoo is a major user of free software.

> What will happen to them now?

It will be like HotMail after Microsoft bought them. They will be forced to switch over to all MS software and all code written for other platforms than Windows will be ported or rewritten. Yahoo's web sites will be redone so that intentionally or not, they will work less favorably with non IE browsers and support for other platforms such as Mac or Linux for things like Yahoo Messenger will languish if not outright be discontinued. At some point I wouldn't be surprised to see things like Yahoo mail phased out in favor of Microsoft's HotMail platform and Yahoo IM replaced with MS Messenger.

Most people probably think this is only about web advertising revenue and search engine market share, but you have to figure that Microsoft's goals also include alienating non-Windows users and also to take out a company that has been an example of commercial success with open source software.

A large difference between what Microsoft is doing and what Google has done (for the most part) is that Google built their businesses, while Microsoft bought them.

For example, Gmail verses Hotmail.

Janitor is exactly right, I believe. Just as Hotmail became just another attribute of Microsoft proprietary lock-in, so will both Yahoomail and YIM. And not because of some terrible nefarious plot or design, but simply because that is exactly what Microsoft always does and always has done.

Very obvious: All Microsoft formats, all Microsoft platform, all Microsoft back-ends, Microsoft development environment. F/OSS is just there for random tools (until such time as Microsoft writes a replacement).

Yahoo (or MS-Yahoo) will be used, after it no longer quite works with non-IE browsers, as an example why using Windows means greater _compatibility_.

That's the key, I think. Microsoft realizes that they must do everthing to try to disguise that MS products are the only ones that are "incompatible" with absolutely everyone else.

Like saying, "America is perfectly compatible, it's everyone else that won't use the English measurement system."

Every time Microsoft talks about "interoperability" they are _LYING_. All F/OSS formats are well documented and wide open. If Microsoft had any intention of being interoperable, they could do so 100% in no time.

Quoting:t some point I wouldn't be surprised to see things like Yahoo mail phased out in favor of Microsoft's HotMail platform and Yahoo IM replaced with MS Messenger.

As an LXer reader I can't blame you for omitting something: Hotmail and MSN Messenger have been phased out already. Everything is called 'Windows Live Bla' now. Not that it's important. I mean, not to us. But to Microsoft, this whole Windows Live thing seems utterly important. In a world where especially one of their two cashcows gives less and less milk (MS Office, that would be) and where judges seem 'hostile' to MS (from an MS point of view), proliferation of business to other branches is important.

Now here comes what I think: Microsoft _recently_ phased out the name Hotmail, only one year ago or so I believe. But it kept the name Hotmail from 1998 - when Microsoft bought it - till at least nov. 2006, when Microsoft started to roll-out Windows Live, starting wiht a pilot in my country. This means they kept the name for 8 years. I guess they will do about the same with Yahoo!.

> Yahoo's web sites will be redone so
> that intentionally or not, they will work less favorably with non IE
> browsers and support for other platforms such as Mac or Linux for things
> like Yahoo Messenger will languish if not outright be discontinued.

Quite possibly they'll try, but the thing here is that this only works for locked-in customers. That doesn't exactly describe most Linux (or Mac?) users. Or Google-style online services. Today, there is competition in this market!

Indeed, it seems today they will lose about 1 out of 7 of their 'Yahoo' customers if it doesn't work in Firefox anymore.
If we look at the acquisition of Yahoo as a mere acquisition of Yahoo's customers, that would mean flushing 1/7 of $44,6 billion = $6 billion down the toilet, hoping to create more value in Microsoft by decreasing the value of Yahoo. If Microsofts shareholders weren't that incompetent (Bill Gates comes to mind) I'd say they were not going to take that.

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